


Dancers In The Rain

by Patchouli (lifelesslyndsey)



Series: Brothers Grim [19]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Ben POV, Jealousy, M/M, ben yells at him, blueberry muffins, klaus is mean, roadhead, seasonally innapropraite coffee drinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2019-07-06
Packaged: 2020-06-23 07:19:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19694641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifelesslyndsey/pseuds/Patchouli
Summary: “Don’t be jelly, Gogo. Maybe she’ll let you watch. Maybe she’ll let you join.”Diego’s eyes slide to Ben’s, but Ben can’t help him. Not with this. The pocket has no sides; they’re all in it together. “I don’t want to watch you fuck the coffee girl,”  he seethes, all quite acid and a scowl.





	Dancers In The Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Qwerty_Hargreeves_25](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qwerty_Hargreeves_25/gifts).



> Dancers In the Rain by -Emilie Simon  
> This song is so goood. 
> 
> Anyway - Hey guys! This chapter took me a minute because I had originally written it to be MUCH ANGSTIER.  
> But that's not what Brothers Grim is about, you know? Nuggets of angst, soothed by the presence of those who share your misery, but make it better. That's Brothers Grim. 
> 
> Anyway, I miss hearing from you. Would love to hear what you think. I have 757 words already written toward the next chapter. 
> 
> WHERE MY MUFFIN BITCHES AT.

  
  


Ben isn’t in love with his brothers. 

He thinks that might be simpler, a cleaner sort of feeling than the writhing, tentacle-deep gut feeling that he would rip himself open into a portal to vast and horrible monsters, to protect them. He’s not in love with them, but he loves them. He’d die for any of his siblings - has died. He might be, perhaps, a little more quick to draw the Eldritch Monsters for Klaus, and somehow Diego has found himself in their pocket too. 

He loves all his brothers and sisters. He’s not in love with any of them. 

And he thinks about that, about how he's never had a chance to fall in love with somebody. Life had never really volunteered the opportunity, what with his militant childhood and the following swift, abrupt death. 

He wonders, had he lived...would he have found someone? Would he have felt that way for anyone? Was he born with numbness in that part of his heart, or was it Death that made him numb? There’s no sure way to tell, so Ben supposes there’s no reason to dwell on it. 

(He thinks it’s a no, anyway.)

None of them had ever learned any sort of healthy relationship skills. They weren’t taught about the implicit trusts that made up love. Not at all; they had learned from a young age, that they were different. And that the rest of the world would never understand. Their childhood left them desperate for companionship, but woefully unable to forge bonds. They have no metric to gauge what is healthy, and what is _ batshit crazy.  _ Both nature and nurture were against them in this; they’re  _ weird _ . Segregation proved this. They were born by what some would call miracles and others abominations (Ben falling into the latter for sure). They’re different, they’re wired differently, and no one not so desperately unwanted by their biological mother that she’d sell them to a stranger...no one so different as  _ that  _ could fall so easily in love with anything  _ normal _ . Anything so benign, so simple. Their adoptive parents were the man who bought them, and the robot he created, with occasional appearances by an overly-sentient primate living in their servants quarters. So it makes sense...why they all failed so miserably at forming healthy relationships. 

_ (Why they can’t seem to love anyone but each other.) _

Allison had used her powers, for fuck sake. Five’s only relationship to date was with a mannequin he imprinted on when Apocalypse insanity took hold, creating a reflection of his own pragmatic psyche to care for him when there was no one else. Vayna had followed blindly the first man to pay her any attention, and it’s a thing that absolutely happened because of their childhood, that they don’t talk about. Luther made it to thirty before fucking a stranger....and then committedly fucking his sister. Ben was corporeal for all of six seconds before kissing his brother. Klaus---Klaus wore relationships the way he used to wear underwear: a fresh pair, two or three days at a time, before throwing them out, feeling just a little filthy, even as he reached for the next. 

And then - Diego. 

Diego had a girlfriend. Like a real one. Once. And it absolutely, hands down, no contest makes him the official authority on healthy relationships in the Hargreeves Family. That’s the golden standard. That’s a success.  _ Christ _ . 

So it fucking makes sense. And he thinks about that, about how he's never had a chance to fall  _ in  _ love with somebody.

(Ben has the notion that it’s an obscure, out-of-control feelings. He’s all too familiar with such things and thinks, very firmly, it’s just not for him. 

It makes sense what's happening between Allison and Luther, between Diego and Klaus. It makes sense that they'd form those kinds of bonds. Ben just...doesn't feel it. He loves them the same way he loved them as a child, it hasn't changed for him. And that doesn't make him sad, he doesn't feel left out. He's pleased, sort of, in a liquid way that sits bubbling sweetly in the pit of his stomach. He's happy for them.

But that's all he is. Just happy. He's happy, the way things are. He likes it. He's happy. He doesn't need to be in love with his brothers to just...be happy.

Klaus seems keen to ignore his admission, content to carry on as if nothing’s changed. And Ben thinks - it would be easy to let him. Easy to believe nothing changed for Klaus because nothing changed for Ben. Except, Ben’s not sure he’s of change, not sure he isn’t frozen as was at sixteen. Klaus is not Ben, Klaus is always changing, bleeding and blending like a drippy, melting rainbow. He is blue, he is green, he is blinding white and black. It would be easy to believe nothing changed for Klaus if Ben didn’t know him at all. But Ben does. And he knows that the way the wind blows changes Klaus, the way the cracks in the sidewalk reach to the west instead of the east change him, how long it takes for the light to turn green when Diego takes them to get breakfast  _ changes  _ him. He’s not shackled to one discernable path, not like Ben. He’s not stubbornly consistent and set in his ways like Diego. Klaus sheds his skin as the day demanded, he was adaptable, malleable, fluid.

So it’s not easy to believe nothing’s changed for Klaus. Not easy at all. Ben can’t. And watching Klaus pretends hurts, tender and sweet. Ben can do nothing; no one can make Klaus do anything he doesn’t want to do, but especially face any illusion of emotional reality. Thirteen years of trauma-induced drug addiction can attest to that. 

_ He probably wouldn’t mind.  _

He probably wouldn’t mind, Ben had said. Diego probably wouldn’t  _ mind _ . That’s what Ben had said when Klaus told him he loved Diego. And Klaus had laughed, all agreeable and chagrined and pinned Ben to the floor to kiss him silly and get him off, like nothing had changed, like nothing was going to change and Ben had let him, instead of saying - Diego loves you, Klaus.  _ Diego loves you.  _

Maybe that’s for the better (it doesn’t feel for the better). Maybe Ben’s not an authority on Diego’s love (he absolutely isn’t). He honestly couldn’t tell you if Diego was in love with Klaus (wouldn’t know how to tell). Maybe Ben would like to say that’s why he didn’t say anything (but...it isn’t). 

There’s no taking it back now. Ben said it. Klaus accepted it for what it was (a bag of fucking suck). They both went about their business. 

Except - Klaus is Ben’s business, and he’ll fuck a bitch  _ up  _ for suggesting otherwise. All the Hargreeves siblings would like to say they have a vested interest in Klaus well being, but none of them - not even Diego - can say they were there when shit was  _ hard _ . None but Ben. Ben told himself at a very young age - watching Klaus spiral a little faster and faster, thirteen turning to sixteen on a dead man's curve at eighty miles an hour - he told himself, with the taste of blood in the back of his mouth...he’d never leave Klaus. And he hadn’t. Not even in death. 

So maybe Ben’s not in love with his brother, but he’d dare you to suggest he didn’t love him with everything he had. He might be dead, he might be sixteen and thirty-something all at once, but Ben  _ knows  _ what love is, and he loves Klaus.

So watching Klaus go on as if nothing has changed?

It hurts. 

Watching Diego also watch, and fail to fucking realize what’s happening---

_ Burns _ . 

Klaus is flirting with the barista. A pretty, dainty, twenty-four-year-old blonde girl with a septum piercing and four visible cat tattoos. Her name is  _ Delaney _ ; she’s just finishing up her master's degree in molecular biology and she’s honestly fucking awesome, Ben thinks. She’s actually quite great. Petite, and pretty, with big stars in her eyes as she watches Klaus tell stories with his whole damn body. She gives Ben a free blueberry muffin while asking if she can borrow his  _ big brother _ for the night and Ben could honestly do without that, but he likes muffins, and he’s accepted that he at least  _ looks  _ younger. (All the time Diego spends calling him  _ little brother _ acclimated him to the idea.) So he takes his muffin from the pretty redhead muffin girl at the end of the counter and minds his business. 

For now. 

But it’s hard. 

Diego? Diego’s aggressively drinking his seasonally inappropriate peppermint mocha frappuccino, the one eyebrow furrowed in anger, and the other eyebrow furrowed in equal confusion. He has no idea why Klaus is writing down his number -  _ their shared home phone number _ \- up this sweet, clueless grad students forearm in thick, black sharpie, or why it’s  _ pissing him off.  _

Ben gives in after Diego’s third heavy, huffy sigh, and kicks Klaus in the back of the leg. “There’s a line,” he says, but there is no line, so he looks very pointedly at the door. “It was nice to meet you, Delany.” 

She smiles brightly, the little gap between her front teeth almost too cute, and says so cheerfully, “you too, Benny!” that he almost feels bad for the twitch his dick gives at hearing  _ that  _ name from  _ her  _ voice. He’s  _ conditioned _ . Sue him. 

(His dick is sixteen. His dick is gonna be sixteen forever. He  _ despairs _ .)

Outside the coffee shop, Klaus is looking very pleased with himself, and Diego drops his drink, not even halfway finished, directly into one of New York’s dank overflowing public trash cans. “This place sucks,” he mutters, cramming his hands into the front pocket of his jeans. This place does not suck. Diego loves this place. Diego showed them this place. Ben fucking  _ despairs,  _ even more deeply, a whirlpool of idiocy ripping him back and forth, and he is helpless to the both of them - the fucking assholes. He still couldn’t say for certain if Diego was in love with Klaus, but he’s fairly certain they’re both too traumatized to work out their emotions in any kind of healthy way. That stands to reason on a rather broad spectrum actually, with or without the pseudo-incestual affairs. 

And because Ben’s never known Klaus to be anything but clever, he watches Klaus zero in on Diego’s pouting. On Diego’s weakness. Misery, as Ben has come to know, loves company. “Awww,” he says, weaseling his way to Diego’s side, so he can elbow him sharply in the ribs because they weren’t hugged enough as children to know how to be gentle, but they all still crave that physical touch. Klaus knows Diego’s upset, knows Diego’s upset because of him, but because he’s also a genuinely awful person at times, he chooses the path of willful blindness. “Don’t be jelly, Gogo. Maybe she’ll let you watch. Maybe she’ll let you  _ join _ .”

  
  


Diego’s eyes slide to Ben’s, but Ben can’t help him. Not with this. The pocket has no sides; they’re all in it together. “I don’t want to watch you  _ fuck the coffee girl, _ ” he seethes, all quite acid and a scowl. 

Ben at Klaus’ side, together they watch Diego stomp off into the sunset, and Ben thinks - it’s about fourteen-blocks back to the mansion, and Diego’s car is...parked on the curb beside them. He doesn’t stop, either hasn’t noticed he’s going the wrong way or is (more likely) too stubborn to turn back around. Diego would rather  _ die _ , than ever admit to making a mistake. He’d rather walk home. 

But again - it’s fourteen blocks back to the mansion, and the sky is bruised in pink and purple, swelling fat and staticky with the promise of rain. Ben turns and punches Klaus hard in the arm, angling his hand so his knuckles dig deep. “Now we have to walk home, you asshole.” 

Klaus knows. Klaus knows what he’s doing. Just as Ben has no idea, Klaus couldn’t say whether or not Diego’s maladjusted enough to fall in love with his brother. Diego always seemed like the most functioning of the bunch, actually. A steady job, reasonable goals, healthy eating habits, no morbid depression or Peter-Pan syndrome, no fictional relationships with mannequins. It’s hard to say if he’s broken enough to fall in love with Klaus. But in true Klaus fashion, he’s already accepted that Diego probably doesn’t love him, and the  _ probably  _ eats at him as all uncertainty does. And as he can’t be certain Diego could ever love him, he latches onto the  _ one  _ thing he can control; making himself as unlovable as possible. This is Klaus, taking control the only way he knows how; by being spectacularly fucking  _ awful _ . 

Ben braces himself for the cruelty, and Klaus does not disappoint. 

(Klaus isn’t so free as Diego would believe. Klaus married pain a long time ago. And when the world is out of control, it’s pain that Klaus finds comfort in.)

“Go then.” He shrugs, hands loose at his side, Hello and Goodbye, and he’s smirking half-cocked with the devil in his eye and Ben knows that whatever Klaus has to say to hurt him, he’ll hurt himself with too. A double-edged sword, that mouth of his. “You don’t have to walk home Benny,” he says, baring his teeth in a wolf’s smile. “You can leave whenever you want.” 

It doesn't hurt like Klause probably wants it too. Ben's been in his pocket for too long.

In fact, he's even learned a few things. 

That isn’t to say it doesn’t hurt. It does. It’s an ache that haunts Ben - a fear that he’s ruined Klaus life, that maybe he’d have been okay if his dead brother hadn’t suckered right onto his soul, a spectral reminder of their bitter past, cast in sixteen-year-old stone. A constant reminder of a childhood they cannot escape. 

(Maybe it hurts exactly the way Klaus intended.)

"You'd fucking love that, " he says, pushing up into Klaus space, chest to chest. They’re nearly eye to eye - Klaus isn’t that much taller, it’s just his shadow that takes up the most space. "Then you could throw yourself a little pity party about how no one loves you, and you're all alone...conveniently forgetting that it's your own damn  _ fault _ .” 

Klaus scoffs. “He chose to leave.” The sky bursts over them, spilling dainty drops of rain that catch in Klaus ridiculous eyelashes. If he cried, Ben might not even know. 

“Because you’re being a fucking  _ dick _ .” Ben shoves Klaus shoulder, feeling himself flicker and fade the way he only ever did when overly emotional. “Believe it or not - leaving situations that hurt you is actually pretty fucking normal, Klaus! That’s a healthy emotional response! Cutting yourself on the things that hurt you isn’t. You’d turn Diego into another knife to cut yourself on and then claim he fucking stabbed you. How is that fucking fair?” Before Klaus could answer, Ben continues. “What did he do to deserve that?” 

Klaus rolls his eyes, and steps away, turning his body from Ben. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. It isn’t even like that.” 

“Diego’s upset. You wanted him upset. Just like you’re trying to hurt me.” Because Ben can’t fucking leave. Ben can’t ever fucking leave. Ben’s the parasite buried deep in Klaus' gut, and he’ll die for real without him, he’ll suck him dry, sharing his soul. Even when he fades, even when he flickers - Klaus can find him. Ben can never leave, he can never move on. So long as Klaus is alive, Ben remains. And Klaus is a goddamn cockroach. “You wanna act like I’m a burden now that you’ve brought me back to life? Fine. Go ahead. I think it all the fucking time, Klaus. But you don’t get to do that to Diego. He’s not some fucking sugar daddy you’re trying to shake off. He’s your goddamn  _ brother _ , no matter what else happens, and if you can’t manage to fuck him with at least some level of respect, you don’t deserve to fuck him at all.” An absurd sentence. A brand new sentence. Ben’s sure no one’s ever uttered it before. 

He watches as the cut of Klaus jaw twitches and tightens. "Protecting Diego now, huh? Thought nothing changed, Benny. Or was it that nothing changed between you and me? I think if you hurry, you can probably catch up to him.” 

"I'm not protecting Diego, you absolute  _ cunt _ .” He’s so mad. He’s so fucking  _ mad _ . He feels as helpless as he did as an intangible ghost, watching Klaus foam at the mouth, unconscious on the floor.  _ He  _ might be crying, but Klaus would never know, as the rain comes harder, soaking through their clothes. Klaus is hurting himself, and Ben can’t do a single fucking thing about it and it’s infuriating and distressing and he feels himself flicker, feels his fingertips fade. He curls them into balls at his side. “ I'm protecting you. From you! But if you wanna keep being absolutely awful, fine.  _ Fine _ . But you’re not bringing her back to the house."

“Yeah?” Klaus laughs, throwing his head back and the sweet curve of his throat, where Ben had woke up only this morning, is a cruel but fueling stretch of skin. Ben knows what needs to be done. “What are you going to do about it, Benny?” 

Without warning, ...he leans up and kisses Klaus. Deep, messy, the way Diego does, licking his way inside, both rude and angry and unlike him. Klause reacts on instinct, wrapping his arms around Ben and the damage is done by the time he realizes they're in public on a street corner. He turns and catches Delaney's scandalized face through the mirror. She’s scrambling out from behind the counter, disappearing into the back room, and Ben knows - she’s not going to call. 

The muffin girl, in juxtaposition, is...watching. And possibly taking notes. 

" _ Fuck _ ," Klaus mutters, turning back to Ben. "Oh wipe that fucking smug look of your face, and I'll call us a goddamn taxi."

“I love you,” Ben says, instead of anything else. “But you can’t do this anymore. I couldn’t stop you before, but I can now. You’re not doing this anymore.” 

Klaus’s face changes, smoothing out and slipping when he looks back at Ben, who hasn’t moved a single step on the sidewalk. “I’m not even doing anything.” 

“You think this isn’t like one of your fucking benders?” Ben supposes, from Klaus end, it isn’t. But it hurts Ben the same way to watch. “You’re hurting yourself to escape reality because you’re not in control and you can’t handle that. You don’t care who you hurt in the process. Me. Diego. Yourself. That girl - you don’t even like that girl. But you’d bring her back just to parade her through the house. And she’d call the next day, and you’d ignore her, or maybe Diego would answer, maybe she’d keep calling. But you’ll never answer. So she’ll be hurt, and Diego would be hurt, and you’ll be hurt, and angry and mean, and you’ll sooth that bruise by picking someone else up, and doing it again. And yeah, Diego will leave. Diego will leave the situation that causes him pain, because Diego has, on some obscure level, one or two mildly acceptable coping mechanisms. But you know what he’ll do? He’ll throw himself into his vigilante bullshit. He’ll move back to the gym where no one can see him bleeding out, or sewing up his own stitches. And he’ll probably die that way, on the floor of a basement boiler room, just the way we worry about  _ now _ . He comes back to the mansion now, because we worry and he doesn’t want us to worry, do you know why?” 

Klaus' face is stone, pale white and fraught. “I’m sure you’ll tell me,” he says, failing to capture that snide dissonance he so favors. “Well. Carry on with storytime, Benny.” 

“Because he loves us, asshole.” Ben doesn’t have the strongest understanding of love. His interactions with love have been limited, to...essentially Klaus. But Diego folds their clothes when they leave them in piles on the ground. And he kisses their foreheads when he slips out in the night. He makes them both eat vegetables. He wants to teach them how to drive. He inquires, awkwardly, about their emotional state from time to time. Ben feels loved, by Diego (Klaus too, in his Klaus way). “Maybe he just loves us as brothers but...I mean  _ shit _ , Klaus. He does love us.” 

He watches Klaus body unfold, deflate, dragging his shoulders down and curling his spine in on itself like a white-capped wave. “I don’t do feelings, Benny. I numb them or I turn them sour. I don’t pine and hope and make myself sick with it.” 

“You feel things more deeply than anybody, Klaus. You do feelings, you let them wreck you. It’s okay--- It’s gonna be okay, no matter what. You can love him. You can be in love with him. But you can’t decide he’ll never love you like that for him. That’s not fair.” 

“We’re not just talking about circle jerking under the covers, Ben. We’re not just talking about sex. This is  _ way  _ more fucked up.” 

“So you love him. So you’re in love with him. Yeah - it’s fucked up. But fucked up is the only consistent thing we’ve ever had in our lives, so maybe just let yourself have this. Good or bad - he’s our brother, and he loves us.” 

“Right.” Ben watches the proverbial steel curl up his cat-claw spine until he towered once more, shadows and light. “Shit. Christ. Fuck.” He takes Ben by the face, where they stand on the sidewalk in front of a coffee shop, and nothing else matters, not the Coffee Cart Girl, not societal ideals, not life or death, nothing. He kisses Ben sweetly, on the forehead, on the nose. He kisses Ben’s mouth, once, then twice, and holds their foreheads together. 

“Christ. It’s pouring out, idiots! Get in the fucking car,” Diego hollers, where he’s idling on the sidewalk. “Are you really doing this here? What if that---girl, sees?” 

“She already saw,” Klaus said, simple and clean as he tucked Benny up under his arm and lead them to the car. “Benny gets a little jealous, apparently.” 

Ben---Ben lets that one slide. 

It’s not as easy as it used to be, to shimmy to that place between the now and gone, that grey space only Klaus could see, but Ben does. 

_ Benny  _ does. 

“I think he’s feeling a little shy after the coffee shop,” Klaus lies, when Diego furrows his brow in the rearview mirror. When Diego looks away, Klaus own eyebrows are furrowed too. 

“So he’s not in love with you,” Ben continues their conversation from the sidewalk, Diego oblivious to it all. “Making sure he could never love an asshole like you is the shitty, easy way out. What about  _ making  _ him fall in love with you, huh? You ever consider that?” 

Klaus clicks his tongue, mouth open and incredulous. “I’m sorry, are you---Ben, are you suggesting I---” 

“Romance him,” Ben suggests, because Klaus can’t finish that sentence anyway. “Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. Stop acting like a little bitch, and put the moves on Diego.”    


Klaus huffs and licks along the edge of his top teeth. “Huh,” he says, eyeing Ben from the bottom up. “You’re one sick fuck, Benny Boy. But maybe you’re not wrong.” 

As Ben fades back into the living world, Diego clears his throat. “Something you didn’t want to share with the class?” His tone is vanilla-neutral, sweet and kind but Ben knows nothing bothers Diego more than being left out. 

“He was telling me to apologize,” Klaus lies again, and Ben would be upset with the rampant lying, but he’s an adult and he gets the necessity at times. And in a way - Ben  _ was  _ telling Klaus to apologize. “For being a dick.” 

Diego’s gaze shifts right out of view in the mirror, but Ben can practically feel the scowly, flutter of his lashes. “It’s whatever.” 

“It’s not whatever,” Ben insists, driving his elbow into Klaus' ribs. “Tell him.” 

“Well, it won’t mean shit if it’s under duress!” He slaps Ben’s elbow, and curls his body away from him, pouting. “But I am sorry. It’s not whatever. If you’re not sleeping with other people, I’m not sleeping with other people.” 

It’s a big declaration for Klaus, who treats sex like recreation, the pleasure-button pressed over almost everything else, second only to hard drugs. And he doesn’t do such drugs anymore, so sex is vital. 

(They have a lot of sex.) 

“What about Ben,” Diego says, in that flat, neutral tone of his. 

Klaus laughs, and pulls Ben back under the shelter of his long arm, sliding fingers into his hair. He doesn’t pull. He never does. But his nails scratch over Ben’s scalp in a way that turns his spine to liquid gold. 

(He’s a cat. He’s a fucking cat. Feed him. Pet him. Leave him alone.)

“What about Ben? I don’t think it’ll be an issue. Allow me to be very presumptuous brothers mine, at this moment. Benny,” Klaus enunciates the syllables as he flexes his fingers up to the shorn, pricklier hairs at the nape of Ben’s neck, making them ripple in pull in a tangible wave. He shivers all over, sinks into the feeling. Klaus is  _ so  _ good, and Ben is  _ so  _ easy. “Has managed to fly wildly past  _ your  _ bisexuality, and  _ my  _ pansexuality into the far darker and seedier kink of  _ strictly  _ homosexual incest.” Klaus shakes his head very gently, as his fingers dance upward, over the crown of his skull. “So unless he decides Five and Luther are looking good, he’s onboard for monogamy. Or...You know. The three-way equivalent.” 

“Polygamy,” Diego replies so fast, Ben is struck very suddenly with a vision of him hunched over a book in the public library, deeply researching exactly what they are. Polygamy. Christ. “Committed polygamy.” 

Ben would like to touch on that - on polygamy, on Diego absolutely researching how to define multiple partners, but Klaus' fingers pause where they’re dancing patterns along his scalp. “Committed, are we?” 

“If you’re not fucking other people, I’m not fucking other people.” Diego pairs these solemnly spoken words with a single-shoulder shrug. “Respect,” he says, quietly. “It’s an issue of respect. That girl.” There’s too hard an inflection on both  _ that _ , and  _ girl _ , and Ben watches Diego’s knuckles go white where they curl over the keyboard and he thinks - it won’t take much for Klaus to romance Diego. Not much at all. “That girl--- you couldn’t be honest with her. You couldn’t tell her the truth. That’s disrespectful. So if you want...” He yanks a hand off the wheel and brushes it roughly through his hair and Ben wants so badly to bite it - bite him right where the web stretches between his thumb and forefinger. “If you want to sleep with other people, it’s  _ whatever _ . But if you want to sleep with other people, I don’t think we should...continue this.” 

And to his credit, Klaus mulls that over. He’s silent just long enough to give it actual thought, but not so long it becomes cruel. The concept of respectful sex is entirely foreign to him, Ben thinks. “If you’re not fucking other people, I’m not fucking other people,” he says again. “Benny?” 

“If you think it would be impossible to explain the sexual relationship you share with multiple brothers, try explaining that you’re partially dead and heavily reliant on your brother to remain corporeal. Also, even if I wanted to date - I look sixteen. I don’t want to date sixteen-year-olds. I’m  _ old _ .” 

“There’s a very viable market for older men looking to date sixteen-year-olds,” Klaus sings, with a lecherous grin. “Why, when I was sixteen---” Ben bites  _ him _ , turning just enough to sink his teeth into the boney curve of Klaus' shoulder. What Klaus did when he was sixteen was nothing short of masochism and depression and will not be spoken on as a joke, or for levity.  _ No _ . “Hey! Ow! You little shit. Diego, you’re undoing all my fucking training---” 

Ben bites him again. “I am  _ not  _ a dog.” 

“No, you’re just a  _ bad boy _ .” Before Ben’s brain can get over the weird, sharp, sudden  _ sting  _ those words upset in him, Klaus holds out his bitten hand. “Kiss it.” 

“You’re a toddler,” Ben seethes, but he does as he’s asked, and drags his tongue over the faint, fine marks his teeth left behind, before letting his lips brush the pale, soft skin there. 

“Better,” Klaus hums, moving his hand to cup Ben’s jaw. “Now, are you done whining at me? I have an apology to finish off.” 

There’s a slight inflection to the words  _ finish off  _ that leave Ben certain someone’s going to come before they get home. 

His eyes slide to Diego, and Klaus smiles. 

“I’m done whining,” Ben confirms, easing back so Klaus can disentangle himself. “Carry on.” 

It’s not an elegant maneuver, unfolding himself from the backseat and into the front seat like an origami swan, but Klaus manages. “Klaus,” Diego says, on an exasperated huff. “You don’t have to---” 

Klaus reaches over, scooting his way to the middle of the bench seat. “Yeah yeah, you got all jelly over some hipster. Shut up, I’m gonna blow you.” 

“I’m  _ driving _ .” There’s a pause. “I wasn’t jealous. I just don’t think it’s right.” 

“And you’re not wrong, it’s not right. I’ve seen the error of my ways, Benny set me right. This car is very spacious with bench seats. Shut up.” He winks at Ben and disappears below his line of sight. Ben lets the liquid gold feeling in his spine drip and puddle low in his belly. He’s a little bit hard, palms sweaty where he drags them up and down his own thighs. The more he sees his brothers together, the more he understands the appeal. He understands why Diego couldn't help but watch. 

They end up on the docks, parked near the rarely used scenic overpass, that looks out on murky, sludge water and moldering trash that decorates the edge of the river like depressing, sewer garland. Klaus already has Diego out of his pants. 

Ben stretches out in the back seat, a lazy, hazy grin spread across his mouth, the air thick with  _ something _ . Diego’s arm is stretched across the back of the bench seat, and Ben can’t see, but he knows his other arm, his other hand - it rests in Klaus' hair, torn between pulling and pushing. They’re going to be okay, Ben thinks. They’re going to be just fine. 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> 757 words already written on how Klaus Charms Diego. 
> 
> FUCKIN' GET UM KIDDO


End file.
